Sold to a Marseille Don, So He Knelt at My Father's Grave novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Sixty Days
At the reading of Pascal Orsini's will, her uncle sells her, the heir says her father drowned his brother, and Vannina writes her own line into the clause and puts the ring on herself.
The notary read the clause, and my uncle's hand closed on my shoulder.
"Antone Orsini keeps Orsini Maritime only if he marries a Santoni daughter within sixty days of the funeral."
Forty people stood in the front room of the Orsini house, and none of them moved.
"The marriage must stand three years. If it does not, the line passes to the mariners' fund."
I had clay under my nails.
My uncle had told me to come dressed for family, and I had come straight from the kiln.
Across the table, Antone Orsini did not look at the notary.
He looked at the hand on my shoulder.
"My brother's girl is the only Santoni daughter still unmarried," my uncle said, warmly, to the whole room.
"The old man and I understood each other, Maître."
He squeezed once, hard.
I understood then why my uncle had called me at six that morning and told me to wear black.
The old man had been dead five days, and my uncle had sold me before the flowers wilted.
Antone Orsini was thirty-four, tall, in a black suit cut exactly to his shoulders.
The whole waterfront said he had never raised his voice in his life.
He raised nothing now.
He looked at me for the first time, and I felt it low in my stomach.
"Ange Santoni's daughter," he said.
"Yes," I said.
"Your father drowned my brother."
The room went very still.
An old woman in black stood at the window with her back to us, and her shoulders did not move.
"Eleven years," Antone said, "and now I am to put my name on you."
I had heard it said in the Panier all my life, in the lower voice people keep for the dead.
I had never heard it said to my face, in front of both families, by a man who meant it.
My uncle leaned down to my ear.
His breath smelled of anise and coffee.
"The Santoni debts paid," he whispered. "The mooring contract renewed twenty years, in my name. Smile, Vannina."
I did not smile.
I looked at the notary, who would not look at me.
Then I did the sum my mother taught me to do with every bill.
My uncle would get the money and the contract.
The Orsinis would get a Santoni wife to stand beside, and a Santoni name to blame.
And I would get the ring, and whatever came with it.
"Maître," I said. "Read me the part about the contract again."
The notary blinked at me.
"The Santoni mooring contract at the Joliette is renewed for twenty years in the name of the Santoni house."
"The house," I said. "Not my uncle."
"Vannina," my uncle said, quietly.
I shrugged his hand off my shoulder and walked to the head of the table.
I took the notary's pen out of its tray.
"Put that down," Antone said.
I did not.
I leaned over the clause and found the white margin beside it.
Then I wrote in my mother's square hand: To a company in the name of Vannina Santoni, who holds fifty-one percent.
Something closed over my fingers on the pen.
It was Antone's hand.
He had crossed the room without a sound.
His palm was warm and dry and heavy, and it covered my whole hand.
It was the first time a man had touched me in front of forty people.
Neither of us moved.
I felt his thumb settle against the burn scar on my wrist.
I felt every one of those forty people watch it.
"You priced yourself," he said, low, for me alone.
"I priced my father's name," I said. "He has been sold enough."
His eyes dropped to the margin and stayed there.
I watched him read it, and I watched him understand what it did.
My uncle would not get the contract.
The Santoni boatmen would answer to the woman the Orsinis had bought, not the man who had sold her.
My uncle's face went gray.
"Antone," my uncle said. "We had an understanding."
"You had an understanding with my father," Antone said, without turning. "He is dead."
He took his hand from mine.
He took the pen from my fingers and initialed the margin, A.O., in one hard stroke.
Nobody in the room said a word.
Then he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a small gold ring.
It was old and thin and worn smooth on one side.
He did not slide it onto my finger.
He held it out on his open palm, for me to pick up.
"My mother's," he said. "Sixty days. Do not mistake it for kindness."
I looked at the ring.
I looked at the old woman at the window, who had finally turned around.
I could not read her face.
I looked at my uncle, whose hand was shaking on the back of a chair.
Then I picked the ring up myself, off his palm, and put it on my own finger.
It fit.
"Sixty days," I said to Antone Orsini. "Give me the date."
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